Unlike the typical frozen margaritas around town, those at Alicia's don't melt into slush.

Popping and hissing, an iron skilletful of beef fajitas landed on a nearby table as I sat waiting for my check in Alicia's Mexican Grille. A boy of perhaps 11 greeted their arrival with wildly flapping hands — shoo, smoke! — and puffed-out cheeks, blowing the spiraling steam as if he were the north wind.

Flap, flap, huff, puff, sizzle, pop, repeat. This went on for some time. I was watching a powerful food ritual, one that this young man will one day recall whenever he hears that particular fajita music or smells the aroma of grilling beef.

I'd be willing to bet that wherever he goes in life, he'll use Alicia's fajitas as a beloved standard of comparison. They're that good: potently smoky, touched with tart lime, tender, slightly striated in texture. They are cooked through and none the worse for it — a minor miracle.

This colorful, contemporary restaurant on U.S. 290 in Cypress would be notable for its fajitas alone, but the kitchen does such a good job on so many things that Alicia's qualifies as one of the best Mexican spots in Houston. One bite of its improbably delicious mushroom enchiladas — gilded with white cheese and a remarkably graceful spiced ranchera cream sauce — proves once again that there's serious food to be had outside the Loop.

Alicia's owner David Herrera's new venture is a far-northwest neighborhood hit, hopping at peak dinner hours and spawning a line on Friday evenings.

Any of the grilled beef dishes here are worth ordering. Those fajitas are good rolled in house-made flour tortillas the size of dinner plates, or plunked by the thick slice onto simple, white-cheese nachos al carbon.

You can get an uncut slab of fajitalike carne asada, Black Angus skirt steak cooked so as to leave a little pink inside, in a number of guises — including a classic "mar y tierra" that layers four jumbo, shells-on grilled shrimp atop the beef. The shellfish were beautifully cooked, still juicy and bathed in a vibrant garlic butter. They tasted ever so faintly of iodine, and for once I didn't care.

Perhaps the best beef dish is the skillet of Puntas Chimino, pan-seared tenderloin tips in a frisky jumble of ham, bacon, onions, mushrooms and seriously hot green-chile strips. Together with a molcajete of chunky, lime-spiked avocado relish, the puntas make eloquent roll-your-own tacos. Everyone at my table competed for the scraps.

Grilled chicken breast Alicia, which got a garlicky white-wine-and-lemon butter to go with its mushrooms and artichokes, came with a bed of spinach for a pleasing effect that did nothing to conjure Mexico. It was good enough to warrant a future sample of the Pollo con Rajas, with poblanos, onions and a bit of cream, or the chicken in creamy chipotle sauce.

Alicia's offers the usual combo plates, including several in classic Tex-Mex style, but the more ambitious dishes are better bets — the opposite of what you might expect. I liked both the chicken enchiladas suizas and the carnitas enchiladas — neither had quite enough tomatillo sauce — without forming a permanent attachment to either one. Perhaps just a tablespoon or two more of salsa verde might have won my allegiance. Or not.

I was particularly unmoved by the lumpy, bland Spanish rice. Refried beans that were unrepentantly salty one evening were vastly improved the next.

The El Presidente combo, however, was smartly composed and perfectly executed: a long taco al carbon with beef so smoky and tart it was good without salsa or fixings; one of those decadent mushroom enchiladas in its genius ranchera cream; and blobs of fresh, good-quality guacamole and pico de gallo.

Chile con queso here is a gamble. One day's version tasted salty in the extreme. Another evening the salt was tamer and the results easier to love. If I've noticed any shortcoming in this kitchen, it's the wildly varying salt levels.

The deep-fried, cream-cheese-stuffed jalapeños here are a guilty pleasure on a par with those reprehensible little Thai cheese rolls I love, to my eternal embarrassment. A slightly oily appetizer portion of chicken flautas, though, suffered in comparison to the elegant, slender flautas at Romero's Las Brasas, just a few miles away on Highway 6 North.

All in all, though, there is little to complain about at Alicia's and much to rejoice in. If I lived on the northwest side, I'd be here once a week.

Instead, I'll leave that privilege to young Mr. North Wind. May he go on flapping and puffing over sizzling fajitas for decades to come.